Defining Meta Tags
Information about the page is contained in a kind of HTML tag called a meta tag. Meta tags can include a variety of the page's summary information, including keywords to help search engines index the page, a text description of the page, and links to external documents, such as a style sheet.
When you insert meta information, it appears within the document's <head> tag, inside a <meta> tag:
<meta name="keywords" content="HomeCook. info, food, wine, cooking, home cooking, homecook, dining">
You can set six categories of meta tags:
- Meta is a general category that allows you to add any information you want. You must give it a name and specify the content.
- Keywords adds one or more words to the document for use by search engines, to aid them in indexing the page.
- Description adds a text description of the site, again for use by search engines.
- Refresh reloads the current document after a specified interval of seconds, or redirects the document to another URL.
- Base sets the base URL for the page. All of the document-relative paths in the page are considered relative to the base URL. For more information about document-relative links, see Chapter 7.
- Link adds a link to an external document. It's used most often to define the location for an external CSS style sheet.
To add a meta tag:
- Choose Insert > HTML > Head Tags, then choose the tag you want from the submenu (
Figure 3.35
).
Figure 3.35 Dreamweaver allows you to set many meta tags for your document.
Figure 3.36 Separate Keywords with commas; Dreamweaver will turn these keywords into a meta tag for you.
- Fill out the dialog, then click OK.